5 Tips for Conducting an Integrated Marketing Campaign

Integrated marketing communications has become a popular buzzword, but what does this really mean? Employing a mix of communications such as broadcast, digital marketing, social media and direct mail can seem like a daunting task. However, when done effectively, an integrated marketing campaign will work wonders for reaching your target market. Here are some tips to help you improve your integrated marketing reach.

Plan thoroughly. As it is with any significant endeavor, thorough planning is an essential first step for your campaign. A well-made plan requires goals that are as detailed and complete as possible to ensure that what you are trying to accomplish is clear. These should drive the entire campaign. SMART is a useful acronym to remember in order to help set comprehensive goals. It entails making your goals Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and Time-based.

Know your audience. For your efforts to be the most effective, it is imperative that you have a firm grasp of your target market's identity. Before putting your strategy together, you need to know who your customers are, what motivates them, what channels of communication they prefer to use and which channels would be the most effective for your company to utilize. Market research is a great way to determine these pieces and define a strategy to reach the right people.

Keep it Consistent. When putting together an integrated campaign, ensure that every piece has similar design elements, imagery and messaging. When you duplicate such characteristics as headlines, keywords and images for each element of your campaign, you deliver a consistent message to your audience.This increases the ability of your message to be remembered through repeated viewings. In addition, when different pieces of your campaign are in harmony with each other, it makes it easier to repurpose content when new channels of communication become available. All of this gives you the ability to build an identity for your brand that is distinct and recognizable.

Stay in sync. Integrated marketing communication often requires the involvement of multiple facets of a creative team. For instance, the team members responsible for the production of content for radio and television communications might not be the same group in charge of the social media or print ad aspects of the campaign. Because this can be such a collaborative process, coordination is vital to keep all efforts cohesive.

Measure and evaluate. Measuring and evaluating your results are vital to successfully executing an integrated marketing campaign. A valuable tool to aid in this task is determining key performance indicators (KPI), or what metrics are valuable to track for a specific campaign. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts starts with comparing your campaign's results to the goals you set. In this way, KPIs give you a comprehensible view of your campaign's performance and allow you to adjust your tactics and/or strategy moving forward.

Weise can help implement an integrated campaign for your brand. Contact Weise to request more info.